Resenting the setting up of a 30-MW captive thermal plant at Bagheri village by Jai Prakash Associates (JPA), villagers have decided to oppose it at all stages.

Hundreds of villagers, who held a mahapanchayat at Bagheri near Nalagarh last evening, chalked out a strategy to present their objections emphatically at its September 7 public hearing for its environment-impact assessment.

Led by a local NGO Himpravesh, its general secretary Balkrishen said high level of air and water pollution would cause widespread damage to their fields and the environment. While the air-cooling system proposed by the plant would cause air pollution, groundwater sources too would suffer immensely.

The NGO contended that the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial area had already reached a saturation point and no more industrial units, especially the highly polluting comprising Z category ones, should not be permissible at all for the thermal plant would virtually spell the death knell for villagers.

The NGO has decided to mobilise mass support for this public cause and demonstrations would be held before the public hearing, confided its members.

They also contended that the chimney of this plant would lead to smoke, making way right in houses of the nearby residents as the plant was being set up in the foothills. The NGO representatives said the company should go in for a hydro-based power project rather than a themal one.

Further, their assertion of comparing it with a Ropar-based plant belied all logic as that plant drew water from a canal while here the groundwater would be put to use, it said.